Monday, October 27, 2014

The Six Berio Berryman Gubaidulina Birthday Posts Merged into One Because Me, or: It's Not a Hiatus Bluff, but See New Tag

I owe you links - but first, a protip: don't forget, like I do every year, that not everyone makes High Egoslavian Holy Days out of Berio and Berryman and Gubaidulina birthdays - but second: blogroll maintenance completed. Moribund have been moved to moribund, the dead just removed. There are some new places I encourage you to try when they float to top of respective blogrolls. As always, thanks for reading, as always, if you are Kinding me but me not you please let me know.

As he grew famous - ah, but what is fame? -he lost his old obsession with his name,things seemed to matter less,including the fame - a television team camefrom another country to make a film of himwhich did not him distress:

he enjoyed the hard work & he was good at that,so they all said - the charming Englishmenamong the camera & the lightsmathematically wandered in his pub & livingroomdoing their duty, as too he did it,but where are the delights

As a kid I believed in democracy: I
'saw no alternative' - teaching at Big Place I ah
put it in practice:
we'd time for one long novel: to a vote -
Gone With the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No"
and we sat down with War & Peace.

As a man I believed in democracy (nobody
ever learns anything): only one lazy day
my assistant, called James Dow,
& I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds,
and I said curious, 'What are your real politics?'
'Oh, I'm a monarchist.'

Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science.
I resign. The universal contempt for Mr. Nixon,
whom I never liked but who
alert & gutsy served us years under a dope,
since dynasty K swarmed in. Let's have a King
maybe, before a few mindless votes.

The required Egoslavian litany of Berryman's birthday:

John Berryman was born 100 years ago today. I was 21 when Pary Gittenger,
an English teacher at Montgomery College, Rockville, loaned me his copy
of Dream Songs and changed my life. Thank you, Pary.

Luciano Berio. I loved his music before one of his pieces became an integral part of Egoslavian history. Click his tag if you're curious. Don't worry, you're not. Sofia Gubaidulina's birthday post later today, Berryman's centennial tomorrow, otherwise fuck it fuck me fuck this, because of fuck it fuck me fuck this.

EIGHTY-THREE TOMORROW

Not only is tomorrow Luciano Berio's eighty-ninth birthday, it is Sofia Gubaidulina's eighty-third, double High Egoslavian Holy Day Eve. Yes, I post this piece all the time, that's how MSADI5G works.

EIGHTY-NINE TOMORROW

Berio's birthday, a High Egoslavian Holy Day, is tomorrow, and, as will be seen in the standard Egoslavian Berio birthday post, always sparks major bleggalgazing, much of which I will spare you. Yes, that sentence, while true, written as much for the gag as content. So I haven't spared you bleggalgazing at all, nor the history of this shitty blog.

THE WILL

John Berryman

A frail vague man, in whom our sense ached
With nothing, began to whisper with himself
At line-up, from the rear, -
We trembled for him, - shook the scald that caked
His skull, totting up phantoms none could solve,
Fag-end of a career.

(Shadowless in a cairn, four lights. Farewell,
The legacy trots off,
A swimming moment of the stiff's desire
Such decades since. Or nothing trots to tell
Intestate once with love
Pain brain stood up a bit out of time's mire.)
He scrambled one night out
And dodged between the lights far to the wire,
Where he lodged. I suppose he crisped, dying in fire;
A shot or so, a shout;
But certainly, lifting our scalps, well beyond fear,
He suddenly sang, sang, hanging on the wire.